Johanna Blakley on Fashion and Intellectual Property

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2010

⏱️ 68 minutes

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Summary

Johanna Blakley of the University of Southern California talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the fashion industry and the role of intellectual property. In the fashion industry there is limited protection for innovative designs and as a result, copying is rampant. Despite the ease of copying, innovation is quite strong in the industry and there is a great deal of competition. Topics discussed include the role of the street in generating new designs, the role of fashion in our lives, and whether the host of EconTalk has any hope of being fashionable. The conversation concludes with a discussion of the Grand Intervention, an urban park design competition, and the potential of Second Life for studying social trends.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:13.9	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org
0:21.2	where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to
0:26.5	another information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you. Today is June 8, 2010, and my guest is Johanna Blakely, Deputy Director
0:43.7	of the Norman Lear Center, a think tank at the University of Southern California, Johanna
0:48.6	Welcome to Econ Talk. Thank you. Now, you're a student and expert on culture and fashion and a
0:57.8	whole wide array of stuff. I found out about you because of a talk you did at TED.com, which we'll
1:03.8	put a link up to on the site for this podcast. And our goal today is to explore some of the issues
1:10.2	you raised in there on fashion and intellectual property. And we make it into some other issues as
1:16.3	well. But let's start with fashion. Fashion is a fascinating world, especially to those of us on
1:23.4	the outside. I'm really on the outside. Nobody's on the outside. Well, that's true. Well, my fashion's
1:29.5	on the outside. It doesn't, it doesn't make much of a statement about myself. I have to say, but
1:33.2	everything you wear makes a statement. I want to talk about that later. We may, the beauty of this
1:39.8	show is that you can't see just how frumpy I am, but or dumpy. But let's start with a higher brow
1:48.2	topic, which is intellectual property in the fashion world. What is protected in the fashion world via
1:55.2	the law and legislation? What is not? Well, the main protection that fashion designers have is over their
2:02.2	trademark, their logo, their name. And so the source of the apparel design is protected. And that's
2:09.7	why you hear a lot about these raids on tyrants who have made fake copies of Louis Vuitton bags or
2:17.1	whatever that they make available on Canal Street in New York or in a Santiago alley here in Los Angeles.
2:24.9	So they have control of their name. And they have copyright protection for all of the two
2:31.2	dimensional designs that go into the creation of a garment. So if they create a textile design with
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